Bill And Melinda Gates Foundation

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation donated $47 million to private agencies working to prevent AIDS in India, said Rajat Gupta, who heads the board of Avahan, the foundation's India AIDS initiative. Avahan -- "call to action" in Sanskrit -- was launched as part of the Seattle-based foundation's $200-million pledge to fight the disease in India, where an estimated 4.6 million people are infected with HIV.

President Obama enlisted the help of billionaires Bill and Melinda Gates in selling his education reform ideas on Tuesday, a move he hopes will help convince business leaders to get behind his plans. FOR THE RECORD: Obama's education push: In the March 9 Section A, the headline on an article about President Obama's efforts to promote his ideas for education reform said Bill and Melinda Gates accompanied him on a visit to a pilot school in Boston. Although, as the article stated, Obama had enlisted the help of the couple in selling his strategy, Bill Gates did not attend the event.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is giving $10 million to the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture planned for the National Mall in Washington. The grant announced Thursday will support the capital campaign for design and construction of the new museum. Allan Golston, president of the foundation's U.S. programs, said the museum will make the stories and history of African Americans available to everyone. Groundbreaking is expected in 2012, and the opening is slated for 2015.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is giving $10 million to the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture planned for the National Mall in Washington. The grant announced Thursday will support the capital campaign for design and construction of the new museum. Allan Golston, president of the foundation's U.S. programs, said the museum will make the stories and history of African Americans available to everyone. Groundbreaking is expected in 2012, and the opening is slated for 2015.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation announced Tuesday that it will allocate $29.6 million to expand its Early College High School initiative to more than 25 states. The program, which is aimed at increasing graduation rates, especially among African Americans and Latinos, allows students to complete up to two years of college during their high school years. Foundation officials said they expect to open 170 schools by the fall of 2008, serving 65,000 students.

Claremont McKenna College has received a $20-million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to fund about 13 full scholarships a year for students who double major in a science and a non-science to tackle societal issues, officials announced Tuesday. Using the Interdisciplinary Science Scholarships, students could combine, for example, biology and economics for a concentration in healthcare policy.

Computer mogul Bill Gates' charitable foundation donated $1 million Monday to a Beverly Hills nonprofit organization founded by actor and director Rob Reiner to raise public awareness about the importance of early childhood development. With the grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the I Am Your Child Foundation will expand its promotion of good parenting techniques and its support for national groups and state agencies that focus on early childhood health and learning.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation said this week that it will donate $37 million to help create and sustain dozens of small elementary and secondary schools from Napa to San Diego. The largest single grant, nearly $16 million, will go to the Bay Area Coalition of Essential Schools, a nonprofit group that plans to start 10 small schools in Oakland over the next five years.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation says it will add $58 million to expand its $1 billion Millennium Scholars program to target low-income and minority students seeking graduate degrees in public health. It's the first time the Seattle-based foundation has added money to the program since it was established in 1999. The program, administered by the United Negro College Fund, has given scholarships to more than 10,000 students.

John D. Rockefeller once brooded that giving away money intelligently was more difficult than making it. Bill Gates, who has surpassed the oil titan as history's biggest philanthropist, doesn't completely agree. "I think both making money and giving it away well are quite difficult -- probably equally so," the 49-year-old computer software giant wrote in an e-mail exchange Tuesday night, just before he left for the economic forum in Davos, Switzerland.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced Friday that it would greatly increase agricultural grants designed to reduce hunger and poverty in Africa and South Asia. The $306-million commitment over four years included $164.5 million to the Nairobi, Kenya-based Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, for efforts to improve soils and help small farmers boost crop yields. The Rockefeller Foundation contributed an additional $15 million to the effort.

In a statement posted on its website, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria has challenged portions of a Los Angeles Times article about Global Fund efforts in Africa. The Times report, published Sunday, said the Global Fund and other programs supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation have had a mixed effect on key measures of societal health in sub-Saharan Africa.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced Tuesday that it would give $280 million for research and development of tuberculosis vaccines, diagnostic tests and drugs -- its largest package of TB grants ever. The grants are intended to accelerate recent progress in fighting the bacterial disease, which is among the world's deadliest, said Dr. Tadataka Yamada, who heads the foundation's global health program. TB kills 1.

Claremont McKenna College has received a $20-million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to fund about 13 full scholarships a year for students who double major in a science and a non-science to tackle societal issues, officials announced Tuesday. Using the Interdisciplinary Science Scholarships, students could combine, for example, biology and economics for a concentration in healthcare policy.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation said Thursday that its investment team would consider new exceptions to the firms in which it invests its endowment. The foundation, whose investment policies were questioned Sunday and Monday in an investigative series by the Los Angeles Times, posted a second statement in as many days on its website to spell out its approach.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation on Tuesday awarded $1.8 million to a Los Angeles charter school organization that is waging a battle with the Los Angeles Unified School District to create small, community-oriented high schools. The grant will support five charter schools opened this school year by Green Dot Public Schools near Los Angeles Unified's Jefferson High School, which has been beset with racial strife and low academic performance.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation on Tuesday awarded $1.8 million to a Los Angeles charter school organization that is waging a battle with the Los Angeles Unified School District to create small, community-oriented high schools. The grant will support five charter schools opened this school year by Green Dot Public Schools near Los Angeles Unified's Jefferson High School, which has been beset with racial strife and low academic performance.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation today will announce a $1.3-million grant to Los Angeles schools to improve the teaching of algebra and other college-prep courses. The investment is modest compared to other Gates grants and even other school district initiatives, but marks a growing partnership between the nation's second-largest school system and perhaps the world's largest private philanthropic fund. The one-year grant will pay for teacher training and curriculum design.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation joined the Rockefeller Foundation on Tuesday in a new plan to fight hunger in Africa, beginning with a joint $150-million pledge to improve agricultural productivity. Officials at the two foundations said the money was just the beginning of a much bigger effort to bring the "green revolution" to Africa.